How Much Should I Charge for Photography

Balancing Craft and Income

To become a profitable photographer, it is important to balance the craft of photography with a focus on your income. When deciding what to charge for photography services, pricing should be based on your time spent, the local market, production costs, overhead, and the value of providing boutique services.

Brand new photographers will benefit from our 4-Week Camera to Cash Workshop. Here we go over the focused camera skills you need without the overwhelm and provide expert coaching feedback to give you the confidence you need to start charging for your photography sessions.

Once you've decided how much to charge for a photography session, it is critical to share your pricing confidently and have an answer to any questions or objections. Always remember your worth and the value you provide to your clients.

How to Set Pricing for Boutique Photography

A boutique portrait photographer should price a photography session based on their time and talent to complete the session only. This price will not include any products, digital files, or prints. The level of personal service provided by boutique photographers commands a higher price than what is offered by digital file or shoot-and-burn photographers. The purpose of the session fee is to reserve the time on your calendar. You want to set this price at one that is high enough that someone would think twice about no-showing.

It may be comforting to know that you're not alone in asking the question, "How much should I charge for photography?" At Photography Business Institute, we've found photographers who undercut their session fees at every level. This happens when someone does not take into account the expenses of running a profitable business.

When you create a price list based on what your services are worth, you'll find clients willing to invest more in the unique, high-quality experience of working with you. Keep in mind that you might not be your ideal client. If you can not personally afford something, it doesn't mean that others won't be able to.

Our coaching guides you through the process of educating your clients about the boutique photography experience and pricing your sessions for profitability. Get expert advice on your own portrait photography price lists. To get you started, here are some of our top tips for creating a better price list.

1. Visuals Sell

Clients want to buy what you show them. This is similar to when restaurants include mouth-watering, vivid images of food on the menu. When you are putting together your price list, keep this in mind. With each product listed, include a photograph next to the price and description. Professionally printed price lists will also have a higher impact than one from your home printer.

During in-person consultations, your clients will be more inclined to get excited about investing in wall art when they can see physical examples of what each product looks like in front of them. It is important to have samples of large, fine art portraits of your work that you present at in-person consultations. You want clients see the artworkl, and say, “I want that!”

3. Rethink Your Numbers

$999.00 can look larger and more expensive than $999. Extra zeros and decimal points affect the way the client sees your pricing. Keep the numbers listed on your price list streamlined and simplified.

Similarly, rounding up prices to even, round numbers may be hurting you. Consumers will unconsciously interpret $499 to be significantly less than $500. Consider bringing each of your prices down a dollar to see if it has an effect on what products people invest in.

5. Aim for Three

When creating product collections, it's best to stick with three. These should be large, medium, and small investments. You don't want your clients overwhelmed by too many options. Instead, do the work for them of narrowing down choices and presenting three worthy collections. Customizations and add-ons can always be accommodated later, but this is a great place to start.

Even better than offering product packages is an à la carte price list. Packages may make clients feel boxed in, and the boutique client experience is all about personalization and customization.

Increase Your Portrait and Product Orders

Getting your print and product price list right will result in a natural increase in orders. However, to take product sales even further, here are a few strategies to consider:

1. Holding Back

As mentioned, boutique portrait photographers do not offer high-resolution digital images. Instead, what sets a boutique photographer apart from a digital file photographer is the design and creation of physical artwork from a client’s session.

Sometimes, boutique clients will still ask you for digital files to share on social media. In this case, rather than caving in on the high-resolution images, offer low-resolution photographs of any image they purchase as wall art that they can use for social media.

Common Pricing Method Mistakes

Pricing is an area that many small businesses struggle with, and it is no different for portrait photographers. There are a few common ways that portrait photographers set their price lists.

1. Guessing

While just making big guesses about where your pricing should be is a terrible idea, it is something we see. When creating a price list, guessing shows that the photographer does not know the value of their work and time and hasn't gone through their business costs. It should be obvious that pricing based on guesswork is not going to be profitable.

3. Cost-Based Pricing

Cost-based pricing is based on adding up all of the costs of doing business and then additionally adding the profit number you are aiming for to determine a price. With this method, mistakes can be made when photographers neglect to include their time, educational investments, and the value added by providing a boutique client experience.

How to Price a Portrait

Learning how to price your photography services, portraits, and products will have a huge impact on the success of your business. Let’s take a look at the process of pricing an individual printed portrait.

An 8x10 printed portrait is a product and a price point that clients may use to compare you to other photographers. Understanding the numbers and the math involved in pricing an 8x10 portrait will help you grow as a professional.

2. Calculate Your Costs

For example, the costs to you for producing an 8x10 portrait include obvious things like what you pay your print lab, but they also include many overlooked investments. These costs include labor, such as the time spent retouching images and placing orders, shipping fees, packaging, credit card processing fees, and more. Each of these costs, plus all of the other expenses that go into running a photography business, must be considered before you price any product.

It may seem overwhelming, but all of your fixed business costs, such as equipment, insurance, taxes, marketing, staff fees, etc., are also important in determining the price an printed piece of artwork. If you want a profitable, successful portrait photography business, you must make sure you're charging enough for every product you sell.